“Using technology to diagnose and prescribe learning techniques”
Hometown: Copley, OH
Goals: I plan to complete my Master's in Instructional Technology and put my education to use by assisting NEOMED faculty.
Favorite Saying: "Lead, follow, or get out of the way!"
About Me: I am currently the Program Coordinator of Faculty Development at NEOMED, and an undergrad alumni of the University of Akron. My husband and I have been married for 25 years and are the proud parents of 3 children.
Home Town: Philadelphia, PA
Goals: To better understand how to implement technology into my daily lessons in order to improve each students success.
Favorite Saying: "Don't Talk About It, Be About It"
About Me: I am a father of 3 and have been blessed in marriage for thirty years, My granddaughter lives in Germany along with my eldest and my daughter in law. I work for the Elyria school system and am very blessed to be working with these future leaders.
Home Town: Bainbridge Twp, Ohio
Goals: To ultimately be a go-to person in our building for technology. Also to better implement technology into the classroom, which moves our students to being great 21st century learners!
Favorite Saying: "If you expect something to change in the outcome, something must change in the process"
About Me: I teach Spanish in Garfield Heights, and love dealing with these high schoolers every day! I am married and my husband and I have a four-year-old husky named Thunder. I also have coached high school volleyball since I graduated from Heidelberg College.
Home Town: Wadsworth, Ohio
Goals: To become an educator that successfully integrates technology into lessons to make learning more engaging and fun! I want to cultivate a 21st Century learning environment for my students, and encourage them to be explorative learners. I would love to one day teach a technology course at the elementary or middle school level to share my passion for technology.
Favorite Saying:
"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." -Benjamin Franklin
About Me: I teach 4th grade Language Arts and Social Studies in the Wadsworth City School District. I love the building I teach in and the staff I work with. Fourth grade is truly a wonderful age, and I enjoy every day! My husband and I are coming up on our 3 year anniversary, and are high school sweethearts. I am in my 5th year of coaching high school varsity volleyball and JO travel volleyball.
Home Town: Solon, Ohio Goals: To develop knowledge and skills on teaching and using technology in the classroom in order to enhance my teaching skills. Favorite Saying: "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing" About Me: I work for the Dean of Students at the University of Akron. My passion for working with college level students has been exciting and rewarding as they are learning more about themselves and who they want to be in life. In addition to my administrative work I have taught freshman seminar, career development and co-op and internship courses on the college level. My husband and I are blessed with a daughter and a ten month old multi-poo.
Subject Matter Expert
Mr. Steve Kaufman, Senior Instructional Designer, University of Akron Design and Development Services
What is the need for instruction?
DDS would like an educational piece that would introduce faculty to the items/content that they need to prepare prior to meeting with instructional designers in order to take their courses online.
Who is the target audience?
University of Akron faculty
What is the anticipated size/scope of the project?
An online presentation module will be developed that could potentially reach all faculty as needed, and could endure until content is no longer applicable.
Are there known delivery constraints?
There should not be delivery constraints, other than making certain that faculty is aware of the existence of the module, and their desire to view/utilize the information.
Would members of the audience be available so that the team could conduct a formative evaluation?
Theoretically yes, although this is dependent upon the ultimate timeline of the implementation/dissemination of the content.
I think you did a good job adapting to the demands of this project. I like your youtube explanations of the process. I agree that screen shots are helpful to users. It seems like your target audience had a wide range of expertise level.
Did faculty issues with putting courses online have anything to do with the content area they were teaching? Was any subject more difficult to put online than others?
Great question Ruth. The SME did not indicate content area as a concern. However having the opportunity to work with faculty on campus, there is some concern and challenges in subject areas such as Engineering, Communications, Sales and Marketing, to name a few, that make teaching online difficult. These disciplines would be able to use hybrid models to support learning.
Dr. Ward
The Analysis phase video is PRIVATE so I cannot view it. Whoever created this needs to make it public.
Thanks for catching this. It has been fixed.
Dr. Ward
Beautiful wiki site....very well designed to create a cohesive look. Very well done presentation, consistent look and feel, each team member did a great job on their presentation. Your team planned your work well and met in a consistent way and that shows in your project. Again this team has created a valuable real world project which will be used and be very valuable to the instructors at the university. Final product is great and I can see the individual grown of each member as well as your whole team! Superb effort!
What was the most significant thing you learned during this project that you can apply in your real world job? Everyone on the team can answer!!
This is Janel: Dr. Ward, I am so thankful our group was assigned this project because in the near future I will be developing online faculty development modules for medical faculty, as well as assisting faculty that plan to incorporate online and flipped classroom aspects in their teaching events. Not only did the development of the project give me practice in the development of the technical aspects, it allowed me to learn about the apprehensions of faculty members concerning the transition to online teaching.
Hi Dr. Ward this is Cindy. Overall I feel I have learned and been exposed to a great deal of new technology, The skills I have learned not only include the basics on how to use and create different modes of technology products but also how to troubleshoot and plan for the unexpected. Its also important to note that while we created a new technology piece, the department we worked with also wanted a low tech product for faculty.
Dr. Ward, this is Jen. I agree mostly with Cindy. I feel much more comfortable now with the technology; our group had differing comfort levels with certain technologies and we all were exposed to more! For example, I considered myself a decent designer with fonts/styles, but Amelia is fantastic and I learned a lot from her stylistic talents! Also, I took charge of the Prezi without having created one before, and I learned a lot through doing so. Creating videos and streaming to/from YouTube is another part of technology that I have been increasingly comfortable with. The content of this project is fantastic for me to be knowledgeable about for future opportunities, but at this time, the technological skills that I acquired through working on the project and with the group was so valuable!
This is Amelia: I agree, our group truly worked together well and were able to complete a wonderful project! I think we each had our own strengths we brought to the table and we played off of them well. It was important to us that the project, Wiki, presentations, etc not only were filled with content, but were presented professionally and graphically appealing.
Diane
Richardson
Very detailed and informative project. I'm sure faculty members will benefit from all your hard work.
What was the biggest challenge for you on this project?
In my opinion, the biggest challenge for us was to decide how to meet the needs of faculty whose technological knowledge varied. We needed to develop a project that could be navigated through quickly for faculty who were advanced in technologies, but one that also offered further resources for faculty who wanted a deeper explanatI like your Preziion.
This is Amelia: I felt the biggest challenge was also to meet the needs of all of the various learners. As we were designing the project, we constantly had to consider the most basic level of knowledge a view might have, as well as the most advanced. We didn't want the presentation to be intimidating, but we wanted it to prove plenty of information. I think they layout of our Prezi that allows the user to navigate through for more info helps with that!
Esther Wain-Weiss
I liked your Prezi and I have gone through training to create the course I teach to THe online.
Design and Development group is offering a 2 week course again this summer to get teachers to convert their courses to online. Do you know if they are using your Prezi to help this effort, or get more people interested in doing this?
As far as I know (Jen) we haven't heard anything about it, but it would be a great compliment if the DDS decides to use this or suggests it to their "students" for some preparation to the course.
Katie White
I think that your learning objectives for this project were clearly stated and to me, seemed to be written in a way that does not overwhelm the learner and audience. I really enjoyed how you explained the transition from face-to-face to online learning. I believe this will be useful for many as technology continues to be an integral part of the classroom.
During the Development phase of your project, you mentioned that an online course should not have the same syllabus as a face-to-face course. How did you go about creating a separate syllabus? Did the SME have majority input in this situation, was it shared responsibility between the SME and team, or was the team the sole determining factor for what was to be in the online syllabus? I like the idea that the two courses are not identical because truly, a face-to-face and online course are two different things and need to be addressed as such. I was just curious about the process that you took. Thank you!
We addressed this issue more as a team of educators and online learners. A syllabus for an online course needs to address technology needs, access to content, and a very different type of timeline from a face-to-face course. The syllabus creation link in the Prezi offers a great template to create a syllabus that meets the specialized requirements for an online course. I (Janel) think the creation of a strong syllabus will set the tone for a successful experience for the online educator and his/her students.
Becky Reiter
Your presentation was very thorough and professional. There is so much to consider when teaching online, and your team did a thorough job of covering what needs to be done. I also liked the theme of your presentation.
As I read your site, I thought how nice it would be to have a similar learning module for teachers at our building. I think more educators would take on onine learning if they had more support. You program should be a useful product for your audience. Do you feel there is a need for more tutorials like the one you created?
I (Janel) definitely feel that such a tutorial is needed at my institution, and may even decide to utilize our group's effort for this project as a template to create something similar for NEOMED. One of the main goals that the SME had for the project was to provide a module that would encourage faculty to consider the transition to the online format, and wouldn't seem overwhelming. I think the message would translate well to educators at a variety of levels/institutions.
I can see (Jen) how tutorials like this could be beneficial to educators in primary or secondary education (assuming your building is one of these). There are many times that teachers only are exposed to something, technology or otherwise, after seeing someone else doing it or talking about it. If someone wanted to be proactive, tutorials like this that cover more specific information for what is available at that school may be beneficial! For example, a Moodle presentation like this would have served our building well a few years ago when they wanted everyone to have a page, but didn't offer the support for it.
“Using technology to diagnose and prescribe learning techniques”
Hometown: Copley, OH
Goals: I plan to complete my Master's in Instructional Technology and put my education to use by assisting NEOMED faculty.
Favorite Saying: "Lead, follow, or get out of the way!"
About Me: I am currently the Program Coordinator of Faculty Development at NEOMED, and an undergrad alumni of the University of Akron. My husband and I have been married for 25 years and are the proud parents of 3 children.
Home Town: Philadelphia, PA
Goals: To better understand how to implement technology into my daily lessons in order to improve each students success.
Favorite Saying: "Don't Talk About It, Be About It"
About Me: I am a father of 3 and have been blessed in marriage for thirty years, My granddaughter lives in Germany along with my eldest and my daughter in law. I work for the Elyria school system and am very blessed to be working with these future leaders.
Home Town: Bainbridge Twp, Ohio
Goals: To ultimately be a go-to person in our building for technology. Also to better implement technology into the classroom, which moves our students to being great 21st century learners!
Favorite Saying: "If you expect something to change in the outcome, something must change in the process"
About Me: I teach Spanish in Garfield Heights, and love dealing with these high schoolers every day! I am married and my husband and I have a four-year-old husky named Thunder. I also have coached high school volleyball since I graduated from Heidelberg College.
Home Town: Wadsworth, Ohio
Goals: To become an educator that successfully integrates technology into lessons to make learning more engaging and fun! I want to cultivate a 21st Century learning environment for my students, and encourage them to be explorative learners. I would love to one day teach a technology course at the elementary or middle school level to share my passion for technology.
Favorite Saying:
"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." -Benjamin Franklin
About Me: I teach 4th grade Language Arts and Social Studies in the Wadsworth City School District. I love the building I teach in and the staff I work with. Fourth grade is truly a wonderful age, and I enjoy every day! My husband and I are coming up on our 3 year anniversary, and are high school sweethearts. I am in my 5th year of coaching high school varsity volleyball and JO travel volleyball.
Home Town: Solon, Ohio
Goals: To develop knowledge and skills on teaching and using technology in the classroom in order to enhance my teaching skills.
Favorite Saying: "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing"
About Me: I work for the Dean of Students at the University of Akron. My passion for working with college level students has been exciting and rewarding as they are learning more about themselves and who they want to be in life. In addition to my administrative work I have taught freshman seminar, career development and co-op and internship courses on the college level. My husband and I are blessed with a daughter and a ten month old multi-poo.
Matter Expert
Initial Team Status Report
Weekly Update #1
Weekly Update #2
Weekly Update #3
Weekly Update #4
Weekly Update #5
Weekly Update #6
Analysis Phase
Design Phase
Development Phase
Implementation Phase
Evaluation Phase
Your name
Your comment
Your question
Team Response
Hi Dr. Ward this is Cindy. Overall I feel I have learned and been exposed to a great deal of new technology, The skills I have learned not only include the basics on how to use and create different modes of technology products but also how to troubleshoot and plan for the unexpected. Its also important to note that while we created a new technology piece, the department we worked with also wanted a low tech product for faculty.
Dr. Ward, this is Jen. I agree mostly with Cindy. I feel much more comfortable now with the technology; our group had differing comfort levels with certain technologies and we all were exposed to more! For example, I considered myself a decent designer with fonts/styles, but Amelia is fantastic and I learned a lot from her stylistic talents! Also, I took charge of the Prezi without having created one before, and I learned a lot through doing so. Creating videos and streaming to/from YouTube is another part of technology that I have been increasingly comfortable with. The content of this project is fantastic for me to be knowledgeable about for future opportunities, but at this time, the technological skills that I acquired through working on the project and with the group was so valuable!
This is Amelia: I agree, our group truly worked together well and were able to complete a wonderful project! I think we each had our own strengths we brought to the table and we played off of them well. It was important to us that the project, Wiki, presentations, etc not only were filled with content, but were presented professionally and graphically appealing.
Richardson
This is Amelia: I felt the biggest challenge was also to meet the needs of all of the various learners. As we were designing the project, we constantly had to consider the most basic level of knowledge a view might have, as well as the most advanced. We didn't want the presentation to be intimidating, but we wanted it to prove plenty of information. I think they layout of our Prezi that allows the user to navigate through for more info helps with that!
I can see (Jen) how tutorials like this could be beneficial to educators in primary or secondary education (assuming your building is one of these). There are many times that teachers only are exposed to something, technology or otherwise, after seeing someone else doing it or talking about it. If someone wanted to be proactive, tutorials like this that cover more specific information for what is available at that school may be beneficial! For example, a Moodle presentation like this would have served our building well a few years ago when they wanted everyone to have a page, but didn't offer the support for it.